Penn State scandal: When child sex abuse is 'harmless'

On Monday, March 20, 2017, Graham Spanier, past president of Penn State University, is scheduled to go to trial on charges of criminal child endangerment and conspiracy related to former football coach Jerry Sandusky's rapes of little boys. At issue is whether Spanier, who was president of Penn State at the time, failed to investigate or covered up Sandusky's crimes.

Unfortunately, there has been of late a spate of highly educated authorities, from the Pentagon to other government workers, teachers, doctors, etc., who have been arrested and even convicted for child sexual abuse, including possession of child pornography. Dr. Lori Handrahan's publication of "Professors & Staff Arrested for Trading in Child Rape," has sparked public outrage as the report has been shared more than 390,000 times in a few weeks. People are asking, how is this happening?

Spanier is academia sexual liberalism writ large

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In fact, Spanier's story exemplifies the consequences of sexual liberalism in academia. During his 16 years at Penn State, Spanier oversaw a number of questionable sexually charged activities. For example, Spanier apparently had no problem with Patrick Califia-Rice, a transgender sadomasochism and pedophilia advocate who keynoted a speech at Penn State in 2002. The president likewise supported an on-campus Sex Faire sporting fun for all such as "orgasm bingo" and "the tent of consent." When asked if the fair was morally wrong, Spanier said, "It depends on what your definition of immoral is." Given his moral confusion, would reports of Sandusky's child rapes have elicited concern?

That was one of the questions I was asked to answer in 2014, when an investigator for Pennsylvania's attorney general asked me to study Spainer's scientific writings to determine whether there was a factual trail pointing to his not taking child sexual abuse allegations seriously.

My investigation first confirmed that Dr. Spanier held himself out as a sexuality expert. His 1973 doctoral dissertation was titled "Sexual Socialization." It focused on adult sex with small children. His most important foundational work – his Ph.D. thesis – opens the door to his pedagogical philosophy, which is currently shared by a multitude of similarly educated and credentialed men and women.

From page 3 of Spanier's dissertation:

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To study this relationship, data collected by the Institute for Sex Research will be used. … To the best of my knowledge, this is the first study that attempts to investigate empirically how the sexual socializing experiences of childhood and adolescence influence the nature and extent of subsequent sexual behavior during high school and college.

… before age 12 or 13, the [sex assaults] experiences in question would not be interpreted as sexual. … [S]exual assault before ages 12 or 13 was not related to sexual behavior …. whereas sexual assault after ages 12 or 13 was. … [A] child's sex education, sex knowledge, sexual values, and sexual behavior from adolescence onward will not be influenced by childhood [sex abuse] experiences since as a child he or she is not capable of interpreting sexual information and experiences in the same way an adult would. (:373)

It is likely that Spanier would not "label" Sandusky's rapes as deviant, but rather as simple sex socialization of boys. That is illustrated further in a later article in which he found sex acts "deviant" only if we "labeled" them so. The observation below from his paper on one type of sexual deviance, "mate swapping," could apply equally to child sex abuse.

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We choose to view deviant behavior simply as behavior that some value and others consider wrong. An individual's behavior becomes deviant only when others define it as deviant. Much of an individual's behavior can be viewed as a response to this "labeling." (:145)

According to that logic, Sandusky's violent oral and anal sodomy of 10- and 11-year-old boys would not be viewed as "deviant" in and of itself.

Shortly after receiving his Ph.D., Spanier landed a Penn State professorship in 1977 and later served as vice provost at State University of New York at Stony Brook, provost at Oregon State University and chancellor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1991.

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Spanier is representative of almost three generations of leaders who have embraced the mantra of Kinsey (a sadomasochistic, pornographic producing, pedophile professor), that "children are sexual from birth and unharmed by sex with adults." Between justification by "science" and rampant pornographic stimuli, is it any wonder that so many of our leaders have succumbed to sadomasochistic pedophilia documented by Dr. Handrahan?

So again, the question is what/when did Dr. Spanier know of Sandusky's child sex assaults? And, how many other high-level authorities were trained by a similar sexual worldview as the football coach and the president?

Ladies and gentlemen, an investigation of Kinsey and the Kinsey Institute waits in the wings. It almost happened under President Clinton in 1995 with H.R. 2749, "The Child Protection and Ethics in Education Act." With President Trump, that window into child sex crimes as the basis of false and damaging research and education can be opened once again. Let those who believe that the truth must be revealed and all children protected gather together to join in the demand to revisit H.R. 2749!